Remembering Dusk
by LoweFantasy
Summary: A twili can never live in the light, unless a sacrifice is given. Thus, she is reborn without memory or power, though not without her love for Link or her regal snark. Link, missing his impish companion more than is sane, is more than happy to help her remember. But she isn't meant to remember. Should she take back what she's sacrificed to be in the light, go back to being Midna...
1. Birth

Remembering Twlight

By Lowe Fantasy

" _In the end, what's the greatest achievement of a single human soul? Leading a nation? Winning a war? Creating a masterpiece? Well, in truth, any one man can do any of those things; die, and then what? There will always be governments, wars, arts, all that whatnot. But you only get one chance to make one soul, one chance to become someone's world, and I believe to become the world itself is far greater than anything you could ever do on it."_

 _-anonymous_

Chapter 1

My world began at twilight. For a breath, or for eternity, I lay there on the sand as water lapped up my legs in tiny, chilly waves. The tinkling hush of a waterfall coaxed me to close my eyes, but something awful gaped open in my chest and made them hurt too much with tears to sleep. Ancient, moss covered tree branches hung over me like concerned nannies, whispering to each other in anxious rustlings. Only one bird called out, probably to bring in the little ones for the night.

Night…

The word found me arms and I sat up, preoccupied with the coming darkness. Things came in the dark. But things came in the light too, didn't they? Which meant, either way, I couldn't stay sitting here (without clothes, I then realized). It wasn't safe. Walls made one safe.

Dripping sand, I stood on uncertain, stiff legs. They pushed the ground much too far away, and so pale…

"Goddesses!"

I flinched and flung my arms around myself, but there was just too much of me to cover. Luckily, the person standing in the gateway was a girl, not quite my height, with expressive grass green eyes. She had what looked to be a basket on her hip, of what, I didn't know.

Though she didn't look particularly dangerous, I fought the urge to recoil. A whisper in my mind told me it would never do to show an enemy, or anyone for that matter, fear.

"Who are you?" I asked.

I didn't like the smile she gave me: surprised and amused. "Shouldn't I be asking you that? What brings you all the way out here to take a bath?" She glanced around. "Did someone steal your clothes?"

I didn't know. But showing a lack of knowledge was just as bad as fear, so I cocked my chin up to show as much dignity as I could with my knees pinched together and my arms wrapped tight around my spilling breasts.

"Yeah. Stolen. So, if you have any ounce of charity, you'll throw me some cloth or something, or at least stop staring."

She sniffed. "That isn't the way you ask for help."

"What? Are you expecting 'please?' Please, then."

Still hinting at something like amusement, she closed the space between us and pulled out a white sheet from a basket I then learned had been filled with laundry. Without me asking, she helped to wrap and tie it into a makeshift toga that covered the necessities (as best as a white sheet could). As she did so, she told me her name was Ilia and, on my continued queries, said I was near a little hamlet called Ordon (not like that helped me much, as I didn't even know…)….

As she pulled away, I stared down at my hands: too pale, with long finger's like a spiders. Ugly hands. Stranger's hands.

The empty maw inside of me groaned and opened wide. I could feel myself slipping, my vision darkening.

Because I didn't know anything, and no one should have to survive such helplessness.


	2. Pride

_"Anything truly worth it takes great sacrifice and hard work."_

 _-life motto_

Chapter 2

Despite my rude behavior, Ilia brought me home in the growing evening and gave me some of the food off her table. I ate only knowing that I needed it to live, not because I had any desire for it. The white sheet sort of frightened me, as it brought out just how pale I was. I would have thought myself completely colorless if it weren't for the knee-length, gold-orange hair that soon became the bane of my existence as it tripped and tangled about my legs. The poor girl cried out when I grabbed a knife from the table and hacked the whole lot of it off.

"Why in the world—it was gorgeous!"

"It was annoying," even I flinched at how cold I sounded.

"Such a crying shame, did you really have to go at it like that! Split ends and—Din, it's almost as short as mine!" Her own hair was a straw like blond that curled at the base of her neck.

And then I saw the pile of beautiful satin orange on the floor and, for the first time in my remembered life, I started to bawl. I suddenly regretted cutting off my hair as if I'd cut off my own hand and couldn't understand why I had done it either.

I guess it became more than apparent afterwards that I was disturbed in the head, because Ilia took it upon herself to get me out of the sheet into some real clothes and tucked away in a makeshift bed for the night. In the moments of darkness after she blew out the candles, another fear seized me: what if I couldn't sleep? What if I had forgotten how? I couldn't even remember dreams or ever waking up, what if I died?

But then the next moment I was waking up, much as I had in the spring, to sunlight casting itself through the window next to me. Sunlight…

The maw moaned something. The coming of light, the leaving of darkness, it all meant something to me, or should have.

Due to the unhinging moment, where I wailed and cried all over her, I had little pride to show when she came downstairs and sat next to the pile of blankets I had curled up in.

"Remember anything yet?" she asked.

"If I had, I would have said so."

She sighed. Pride gone, but not my unexplainable snark. But who wouldn't be annoyed by being asked obvious questions?

"Well I got to tell dad something. He stayed over to help the goats give birth. Probably is going to have to stay tonight too."

As usual, this all meant nothing to me. It didn't evade me that I was essentially a charity case, however. A burden. A stranger.

As every other sensation I had was fear, I clung to the prickling of my pride like a lifeline. The voice inside of me that cried out that I would be no one's dependent was the only sound from the darkness.

I stood up. Ilia stared.

"What can I do in return for the clothes?" I picked at the sleeve of the sort of grey-green tunic she had given me. The ends were frayed, and it looked a bit thorough worn, and possibly for a man as I was larger than she was.

"You don't have to do anything."

"Fine. Tell me something I can do before I go completely mad."

She thought I was serious. Ha ha. Wait…I was serious.

"You could do the dishes."

It only took me ten seconds to realize I had no idea what I was doing, from water to soap to plates. It didn't change with the chore, either, as it became apparent with each task she paraded me through that I had no idea about keeping up a house (or being alive, for that matter).

Thus, we were outside, digging in a garden (because chopping a hole into the earth and yanking out grass was something even cows could do), when _he_ came by.

I knew the instant I saw him that he was my reason. My reason for what, I couldn't say. But up until then I had wandered through darkness, and now here was the sun.

He had raised his hand to greet Ilia, sweat glistening along his bare arms, when he saw me. He stopped in his tracks, looking about as petrified as I felt.

"Midna?"


	3. Midna

" _Our spirits are eternal. We will always be us, but no one can deny that it is our experiences and genetics that make us who we are."_

 _-Nature vs. Nurture_

Chapter 3

I wasn't Midna.

For one, I had no clue who that was. Two, she was, as he said, 'sort of locked in a different dimension,' and three: she turned out to be of an entirely different species. And here I thought I sounded crazy.

"I'm so sorry," he said, expression pained and hands out as though to catch the shrapnel of an explosion. "It was the orange hair—but it's short—"

"It was so long before," said Ilia eagerly. "All the way down to her knees, and then she just sheered it all off with a kitchen knife!"

I didn't say anything to that, and all I could think was that, yeah, it had been stupid. It had even hurt.

But the golden haired, sun kissed boy with the sky for eyes still fluttered his hands in dismay. "Please, I'm really sorry for the mistake."

"It's no big deal," I said, a mite confused.

"But you look like you're going to cry," he said.

And so I had. I hadn't even realized the burning to my throat or the tension in my gut. I couldn't help but be disappointed, I suppose. After all, I had almost had a name; a whole life.

Now I was back in the darkness, staring up at this random sun and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do with myself.

But I had more important matters to attend to—such as the fact that I _did not_ , or rather, _would not_ cry anymore in front of…of anyone!

So to stop the tears, I glared. "I'm just surprised. If you had amnesia, how'd you feel, eh? Shouting random names at a board like darts, dummy."

And with that, I tuned him out and refused to talk to him anymore, and instead focused my attention on hacking out grass and clumps from Ilia's sad excuse for a garden. It wasn't till her hand on my arm stopped me that I finally heard what she was saying.

"…Link can help you. He helped me find my memories again, he can help you find yours."

Well, she had failed to mention that little tidbit. "You've had amnesia before?"

"Oh yes. Why do you think I've been next to you all this time? I haven't left your side for a moment, because it's scary when everything is unknown."

I sneered. "Oh, your bladder must be killing you." What, did she want me to say something gushy? Like, 'oh gosh, you're so compassionate and thoughtful, thank you so gushy much'?

Her nose wrinkled, much like a teacher did to a disobedient pupil. "You're pulling up a corn stalk."

In my defense it hadn't looked much different from the grass, even if it was taller and thicker…and had those long leaf thingies.

But I at least had some of the workings of a plan. So the blond guy knew how to find lost memories, eh? In that case, I had three choices: I could persuade him to help out of the goodness of his heart; pay him to, via manual labor or…no; and three, threaten him. Since the first one made me wince and the third had no teeth to it, I suppose I'd have to figure out how to work for it. But seeing as I could only dig in the dirt and pull up grass stalks nine out of ten times, maybe three wasn't too far out of the way.

After digging, I retreated to the shade of Ilia's house and tugged my sheered locks of hair towards me. Ilia had tried to follow me, but her boar of a father returned just then to do his own share of staring at the pale ginger she had let into the house. While she explained, I tied a knot in one end of the hair and went to braiding it. He had said this Midna had orange hair…if only I knew what twili looked like. Either I could barter it with him or use it as a noose. Ugh, that sounded like so much work.

"Um, lass, I hope you don't mind me asking, but what's the last thing you remember?"

"Waking up buck naked to your daughter here," I said, mind elsewhere with my braiding fingers.

He sort of chuckled at that and quieted at a look from his daughter. Because you know, I would have been so offended by him giggling at the word 'naked' or whatever the hell he was laughing at. L

"Well, as far as I can tell, you're sure willing to work, so you can stay as long as you need to. Though I feel a bit uncomfortable just calling you 'lass.' Um…"

"We should probably let her remember her name in time," said Ilia. "That's what I did. It eventually came back."

"Gee, you did go through that, didn't you? So what's the first thing that got the cogs working?"

"Well, it was just a key word that triggered a recent memory, and urgent memory. We'll just have to be patient."

I inwardly rolled my eyes. Like hell. For all I knew, I had stuff to be getting to and places to be, though how that all had to do with me waking up in some po-dunk spring in my birthday suit…just made the story more interesting, right?

Ilia, good hearted girl she was, decided to patiently teach me the ins and outs of the chores I couldn't quite do that day. I couldn't complain, as it kept my hands preoccupied, though her chattering often dragged my thoughts back from their brooding to interact, though since I had nothing much in my head to begin with, it wasn't like I had anything to add to the conversation. Her huge father, humming along with the conversation as though it were a song, had the bulk that told stories of strength and daring in his younger days, but now only spoke of peaceful days and warm meals. I tried not to be too irked by him. It was thanks to his and his daughter's generosity that I wasn't bear food.

Though inept at first, I learned at what could be learned in a day: cleaning, boiling water, setting a table, etc. By the time dinner was over I was more worn by the whiplashing back and forth of concentration and lack thereof that I didn't protest when Ilia approached my head with a pair of scissors.

"I just want to shape it a bit," she said. "You have such beautiful hair."

Her fingers tickled along my shoulder blades as they pulled down strands. A long lock of braid had sort of managed to escape and reached my belly button. She grew attached to it, so instead of trimming it to match the others, she braided it.

"It'll frame your face," she murmured. "And those eyes of yours. Such a peculiar shade of brown."

"When you're done looking deeply into my eyes," I said, not at all comfortable with her stare.

"Sorry! Sorry. Just for a moment there I thought they were, like, yellow. But who has yellow eyes! I could have sworn they were hazel today!"

Yellow, hmm? Orange hair and yellow eyes…what an awful combination.

She handed me a hand mirror once she was satisfied with her work. I just stared at it stupidly, unsure of what it was for, so she giggled and lifted it to my face—a stranger's face in that it was far too pale. The small bit of sun I had gotten that day had sufficed to pinken my cheeks and nose, but I could have lived out my life underground. Besides that, my eyes weren't like Ilia's doe-like ones, but elegant, almond shape things that narrowed at me in the mirror. The high cheek bones, the large forehead…who was this person? They didn't look like they belonged in any little village or digging in anyways garden. To me, that could only mean they looked useless. I looked useless. Beautiful, maybe, but beauty didn't help feed the people who saved you…unless you were a prostitute…which-nope. NOPE.

I tried to find yellow in my eyes, but found myself just as confused as Ilia. The light from the fire wasn't sufficient enough to tell whether they were brown, orange, or just as she said: hazel.

And since I wasn't about to be caught staring at myself in a mirror, I handed the mirror back to her within a minute or so.

"Thank you," she deserved that much.

She beamed, delighted with herself. "You're very welcome."


	4. Hair

_"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return."_

 _-Moulin Rouge_

Chapter 4

I decided, after consulting with the lone voice in the emptiness within me, that in my schemes to convince Link to help me I first had to establish who was boss, especially since I was dealing with a man. This meant I had to teach him that we would move at my time, my pace, and at my pleasure.

Though, of course, having no memories to back up this logic, I ended up just standing there at the foot of his god-forsaken tree house in the middle of the night like some sort of creep. I had moved all the way out here on the echo of a memory I didn't have, though even as I stared up at the flickering light in the window of the house, I had the faint affirmation that I had thought those thoughts once upon a time, to a situation probably more appropriate than this.

And since I had plenty of time to stand there stupidly and consider my next move, I also got to ponder how listening to a voice inside my head technically wasn't a good thing.

The sudden screaming inside decided it for me.

Without thinking, I swung myself up the latter, heart full of panic. I nearly kicked down the door in my haste—

To find a shirtless Link hunched over his lap, backlighted by a dying fire. I blinked and he was on his feet, a knife in his hand, shaggy blond head like the goats he cared for.

For a full thirty seconds, we stared at each other; he with a feral, beast like glower and me momentarily scared out of my wits.

Like I'd allow myself to stay like that.

"What. The. _Hell!_ Put that knife away! Do I look like a monster to you? Din!"

His hackles dropped along with the knife. "M-Mid…no. You're that—"

"That girl who's come up here expecting a bloodbath and getting some half-naked teenager instead." I humphed and folded my arms to hide how my arms shook. All the while, the voice urged me on. This was good, I was establishing control on the situation. Just for sure measure, I cocked my chin up and kicked the door behind me—I reasoned it would show I wasn't afraid of him, closing off my exit. The next second later, I regretted that, because really, did I know a thing about fighting? And though I _may_ be a bit taller than him (if I ever got down to comparing), he more than made up for it in sheer muscle.

…lots of muscle. No shirt…

"What were you doing out so late?" he asked, no longer wielding a knife, but his shoulders still hunched as though ready for a blow—or ready to deal one.

"Peeing. I hate the outhouses here."

"Sure." He puffed a sigh from his nostrils and straightened, measuring my pose. "Now that you know I'm not dying, you can leave."

The pansy, almost too-polite guy I had talked to during the day had vanished. A man stood before me now, skin taunt across muscles and rippling with scars. No sooner had I caught the white glow of one then I found another till I found myself forgetting about myself completely to stare in open bafflement.

"Goats did that to you?"

"You're technically breaking and entering," he said.

"I didn't break your door," I tip toe nearer, my bafflement growing to fascination. "You lived through these? All at once?"

"Please leave."

"I don't want to." And I didn't. For some reason, the frightening, haggard nighttime Link terrified me much less than his dressed, daylight version. This, I felt, I knew better, if I knew him at all. Which made me pause, blink, and remember the original purpose to why I had come. Trying to regain some composure, I brought myself back from standing dangerously within arms reach of him to the door, where I pulled out the sack I had brought. Not knowing how to start, I simply untied and poured out my massive braid of orange hair. He stared it as thought I had dropped a snake.

"I know it's not much," I said quickly. "But I want you to help me regain my memories. I'm sure you could sell this for quite a bit at the market for wigs or something. That girl says it's pretty as though it really means something, so I'm going off her word."

Something rippled across his face. As emotions wavered in and out of his gaze, a log snapped, giving out an extra burst of fire and light and I couldn't help but catch another thin, white line that I had missed before straight across his nose. How had I missed it before? Oh yeah, I had been averting my eyes from his sudden appearance in my life, baffled by the sensations he brought.

He was my reason.

And I intended to remember why.

His eyes found mine. "You broke into my house in the middle of the night to bargain over your hair?"

I was finding there was little more I hated more than the heat boiling from my gut and up to my neck and face. I hated this feeling—like I was somehow less for my ideas.

"I'd like to see you do something cleverer without your memories," I snarled. "You helped Ilia with her memory, and you're going to help me with mine."

He actually smirked. "Hmph. No."

I prickled. Since I didn't know how to deal with another dose of fear, I turned it to anger. "Excuse me?"

"I have plenty of money. There's nothing you can possibly give me, and I've had more than my fair share of adventuring."

"Adventuring, eh? Is that where you got those scars? Bet that's what was making you scream like a little girl, huh? Nightmare woke you up? Afraid of the scary monsters?"

The glower returned, all hardness and fire and fang—if he had them, that is, and it didn't escape me how strange it was that I would think him with fangs at all.

"Get out, before I make you."

I nearly retorted something really stupid, but stopped myself. That had been a bad call. Embarrassment or not, he was my only way out. I had no other leads. Besides this, what else would I do with my life? Clean dishes and dig holes in Ilia's garden until I died?

There was always tomorrow…I could convince him tomorrow…

I had turned and had my hand on the handle when the thick, silken braid of my loped off hair hit me in the back.

"Forgetting something?"

I bent down and put my hand on it, but paused. The little flickers of leftover flames danced across the orange hair, setting it aglow with amber. Offset with the dark wood behind it, something moved in me. My heart beat out its first need in the darkness and I remembered the terrified scream that had brought me up there to his house in the first place.

Scarred and beastly as he was, I didn't want to leave him.

I didn't straighten, but sat down, right there before the door, running a hand down the braid and averting my eyes.

"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I did that wrong. I…I really am stupid." And terrified. And embarrassed. And powerless. I spat the worse curse that came to mind.

Link, who had already moved to remove me, froze. I only knew this because I was watching his shadow against the floor. He gave another sigh, this one loud and shaken. After a few moments, where I waited for his hands to shove me out the door and the last flames died to embers, he crouched down with a groan.

"She'd curse like that too," he said quietly.

The vague and obvious reference to that alien babe annoyed me. "Full words, please."

"Midna. Sometimes we'd get into these huge gnarly fights after a long day where she was just being a general…well, I guess I was too. But she'd end it off like that. 'I'm sorry, take it or leave it,' and curse like an old man that'd lost a gamble."

His tone had lightened considerably and I dared to peek around the lone braid hanging in my face. On meeting his smile, my insides jerked as though have forgotten how to work and heat flooded down to my fingertips.

But it wasn't necessarily a happy smile. Just warm. Bittersweet, maybe.

"Thank you for being concerned enough to check up on me. You're right. I do have nightmares. And…of course I'll help you find your memory."

The almost bipolar switch totally threw me off, and I started garbling like a freak.

"You're right I was worried—like your head was getting torn—it was a jerk thing of you to—it's just—you'll help me?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

Because I was a bitch, that's why. A strange severe looking bitch feeding off the selfless kindness of his friend and busting into his house in the middle of the night to throw hair at him and make demands. Maybe the person I was reverted to being like this when confused and scared, or maybe I had lost all kindness and decency along with my memories.

But seeing his face, seeing the warmth and the tired, but earnest kindness lined in the same place I had seen a wild, savage thing before suddenly took up the blank space within me. It filled up my head, poured into the empty memories, stirred the trembling, pathetic, terrified thing I really was hidden inside…

I stretched across the space between us and threw my arms around him. Several sensations hit me like fireworks: his chopped pine and grass scent; the heat of his bare skin; his sharp intake of breath. In a flash I came to what I was doing and became ensnared between the urge to let loose and sob on his bare chest and to recoil back like a slinky.

Thankfully, the latter won out.

"I really am insane," I said.

And before I could continue this stupid madness that made no sense and make even more of a fool of myself, I jumped up and slipped out of his door and into the night.


	5. Pink

**Thank you to the few who are following this. I know it's a weird idea, but it's my weird idea.**

 _"Emotions don't make logical sense. Logic is rarely full proof. And spirituality? Well, spirituality can't be understood by either, but with both. You need all three to be human."_

 _-A Friend_

Chapter 5

Of course I didn't sleep. I laid awake to agonize in my humiliating failure to establish any control over my situation. Some messed up reason _he_ was, because I was beginning to doubt the sanity of my original whoever-I-was in getting myself in this situation, memory loss and all. Not to mention my severe lack of tan. Nothing other than insanity would have kept me from the sun long enough to become this level of milky.

Thus, I begged outdoor work from Ilia and set to work with a pickax to a hedge of unwanted dead grass. In what felt like minutes I was hot, winded, half-blinded, and smarting with brilliant sunburns and blisters.

After seeing how my new luxurious red skin clashed with my orange hair, I almost went out and drowned myself in the river.

The other townsfolk, who had been shy of me as I fought against the dead grass from hell, all came about at noon since I had become essentially injured and harmless (what was I, a lion?). They crowded me where I had taken shelter under the shade of Ilia's and her father's porch.

"You poor thing," cooed a blond woman with a pudgy baby tied to her back. "I have some balm back home I'll run and get. Poor Colin always burns horribly in spring too."

"And with that hair," tittered the fat shop keeper, whose eyebrows looked about ready to disappear into her brown hair—along with her tact, I'd suppose. "If you ever manage to scrape up some rupees I think I have some old dye in the back to take care of that. No wonder you were so pale before—maybe you were a princess."

That caught her daughter's attention, who had followed after like a fearful, lost puppy. "Princess? Like a lost princess?"

"Oh, don't be silly, like a princess would lose her memory and stumble into the spring," she said, as though she hadn't just been the one to suggest it. "And with no clothes or jewels either, oh goodness. Unless that Ilia's hiding something…?"

I just gawked at her. How could someone say something so obviously contentious while making it sound like the most innocent of concerns?

"I'm pretty sure I didn't have any jewels," I said.

"Robbed," she said, more to her daughter than me. "Horrible thing to happen, but even our little ones were taken once, and to take your clothes—how depraved—Pergie! Over here! Come look at this sunburn and tell me you still have some of that hair dye from last year."

Pergie turned out to be a broad chested woman with a strong jaw and breasts that made mine look like humble tangerines. Her upside down triangular shape somehow complimented the heavy-set pear which was the shopkeeper.

Pergie gave a low whistle. "Golly. Mind you, Sera, you should go shout'n and drawing attention to someone's misfortune. You probably hurt her feelings."

The shopkeeper, or Sera (like I'd end up remembering that—I mean, I totally would), put her hands to her bowl like cheeks in dismay as though the thought that she could offend anyone had never occurred to her.

"Oh, my, I never intended it. Everyone get's sunburned every now and then, it's nothing to be ashamed of!"

Yeah, because everyone gets told they need to dye their hair as soon as possible because they looked like a walking pink lemonade stand growing carrots on top of their head.

Ugh, and if my eyes really were some sort of yellow—kill me now.

"Link! Back for lunch? Any babies yet?"

Din, Nayru, Farore, and every other god above, I was going to strangle this woman.

And of course he had to look nigh glorious even in dirty, blood-splattered clothes and his hair all over the place as though he had walked through a hurricane. Then he just had to smile, flashing perfect teeth, and I decided I'd go ahead and strangle him too.

"Three just this morning, one after the other. I was actually hoping you wouldn't see me like this…"

The pear and triangle flapped their hands and twittered that it was all nonsense, how they'd known him since he was in diapers and therefore had seen much worse than a bit of blood and dirt. Poor girl who had followed after her mother had turned a sort of sickly mix between a blush and nausea. Probably didn't know whether to swoon at the fine specimen of man before her or give in to the horror of gore (because, you know, he brought splattered goat organs and—grow up, really?).

"I'm just going to head inside—" but then the lady with the baby started up the road towards us, a lidded, wooden container in her hands.

I could feel Link's gaze on me, and since I found it oddly difficult to look him in the eye in bright sunlight (or perhaps it was just because I was a pink lemonade stand with carrots on my head), I focused my attention on the mother, who I soon liked far more than the other two simply because she talked far less. After Link left, the three didn't much see a reason to stick around and bustled off to whatever dreary thing preoccupied their lives.

The baby on her back started to fuss. She stopped mid-smearing of my arm to untie her sash and swing her baby down.

"Oh dear, getting a little hot?" She bounced it a bit which seemed to do the trick. "Would you like to hold her? Just as I finish up."

And since she had been so kind to apply the balm to my sunburn, let alone bring it out, I gingerly accepted the squirmy bundle of blond hair and chubby cheeks. The two of us stared at each other for a good few minutes before the infant found the end of my braid and took to tugging. It was long enough that she could pull all she liked without yanking at my scalp, and when I took its scorpion tail and brushed it along one pudgy hand, she squealed with delight. I couldn't help but smile. Her small weight and skin just as pale as mine, and the innocent, open way she considered me, sunburn, orange hair, freakiness and all, softened the barrier around my heart.

"You know what? I think you're my favorite person here." I tickled her cheek with the braid end, eliciting another squeal. "We should be friends."

The babe's mother's soft hands brushed against my own, spreading the waxy lotion along it. "Her name is Fila."

"Fila. The best kind of name."

"I'm Uli. I have some lotion to help prevent sunburns as well that I'll bring over. As I said, my son, every spring. Throughout the summer too, if I care to think about it."

"Thank you," I inclined my brow to her, as seemed appropriate.

Uli had just started on my neck and ears when Fila's face screwed up and gave a lip wobbling, gummy sob. My heart broke, and I inwardly groaned. If one little sob was enough to brake me, good goddesses, I should never have children.

"Oh oh," I lifted her from the safe cradle of my lap and bounced her awkwardly.

"Sounds like a diaper change is in order."

"What? You already know? I don't smell anything." And no, I was not going to sniff her butt.

"No, I can tell in her cries. It's a mother thing, you'll find out with your own children."

Which I would either end up coddling like a mother goose or abusing, I decided, as Fila's heart-breaking whimper grew to an ear-splitting wail. Uli seemed to take her sweet time wiping her hands on her pants and taking her from me. She spread her sling out on the porch, whipped out a fresh cloth diaper from a pouch on her hip, and unfastened the nightgown like sack. Dimpled legs, with rolls of baby chub, appeared kicking from the white folds. I fell in love again.

"Calm down, Fila baby, you're just wet."

Diaper changed, Fila was returned to coo happily in my lap, totally content, while Uli returned to rubbing balm on all my sunburns.

I must have sighed extra heavy at one point or something, for while I tugged on baby toes she asked, "What's on your mind? If you're up to sharing, that is."

"Oh, nothing, I'm just a useless ginger albino with no identity or memory squatting on someone's land."

"I wouldn't say you're squatting."

"Let's smudge the definition and say I'm being extra, I don't know, aggressive in my word choice."

She chuckled. "My, you sure talk like a noble. But I understand. It's always humbling to have to accept the help of others. It happens to the best of us."

I snorted. I highly doubted what happened to me happened to 'the best of us.' She heard me and decided to keep quiet from then on out, which made me worry a bit that I had put her off. The random, but not unpleasant one armed hug she gave me afterwards eased my concern.

"It's okay," she said. "You're a strong one. I can tell."

"I don't want to be strong," I mumbled.

"Oh? What do you want?"

I hadn't a clue. And just as I thought of some witty answer that might make her laugh, I looked up past her and saw Link coming our way, clean and changed into new clothes. He called to her with a warmth I understood instantly, and once more I felt as though a sun had walked into my world, blinding me.

With the utmost care, I awkwardly handed Fila off to Uli (and ended up having to pry reluctant fingers from my braid).

"Come by and hang out sometime," I told the little girl. "I like you. And your mom isn't too shabby either."

Fila blinked and pawed for the braid and got her mother's finger instead, which instantly became the prey of her drooly, pink gums.

"Keep this," Uli handed the ointment to me. "I'll make more."

I thanked her, and since I was standing, I fell into a full out curtsy. Uli cried out with surprised laughter.

"High birth indeed!" she cried.

I couldn't quite avoid stealing a glance of Link as I rose, who had an expression I couldn't quite read.

Then the pink lemonade stand with carrot hair fled to the dark recesses of her benefactor's basement.

Stupid sun.


	6. Blisters

_"Blood and fire  
Are too much for these restless arms to hold.  
And my nights of desire are calling me,  
Back to your fold.  
And I am calling you, calling you from 10,000 miles away  
Won't you wet my fire with your love?"_

 _-Indigo Girls,_ "Blood and Fire"

Chapter 6

I kept myself busy attempting to find things to clean in the house and ended up frustrating myself and amusing Ilia, which wouldn't do. I wasn't about to be somebody's housewife comedy routine. But then I'd come down to the fact that, well, I really wasn't good for anything but somebody's comedy routine, was I? Pink lemonade and all that.

"Your pouts are quite terrifying, you know that?"

Pouts? I didn't pout. And at the moment I had been trying to destroy the stupid damn blanket that wouldn't fold up right with my eyeballs alone, not pout. It was like the thing was a pentagram instead of a rectangle. She told me to give up on it, but the idea that I couldn't even get a blanket right made me try several times, and I was in no jolly mood.

I ended up unfolding it to sleep under at night anyways…because that's how the damn ball rolled in my life. Next thing I knew I'd be told to scrub someone's freaking outhouse all day just for Bo or some other stinky man to have explosive diarrhea in it.

 _Cleaning toilets, folding blankets…this wasn't what I was meant for._

I ignored the whisper. It was just my pride all over again. But if I knew what it was, why couldn't I get rid of it? Why couldn't I just be happy to be fed and clothed? Did I not know how to be humble?

 _High born indeed…a princess…_

I sighed to the silver moon beams and sat up. My skin hurt. My arms hurt. My back hurt. My legs hurt. And I couldn't let go of a strange pride when I had nothing to be proud of.

I didn't want to be a princess, because if I was, a princess was mighty useless.

Sitting alone, with nothing but my empty memories and aching body for company, I stood and left without bothering to put on shoes.

The night-cooled grass felt like water on the blistered soles of my feet, because no one had yet to find shoes in my size. But the instant I was out and in the dark, silver and shadow painted world, I took my first real breath. The river ran like crystal instead of a mirror for more suns, and I drank from it unhindered by gawking children or chatty women.

I wandered dream-like to the end of the town, past the windmill, to a quiet, lonely dock I had discovered that day in my attempts to rinse out laundry. There, after tucking the nightgown that only reached my knees under me, I eased my raw, bleeding feet into the water. Glorious relief. I could have sung.

I heard his footsteps before he spoke.

"Long day?"

What kind of stupid question was that? I flung my best drool stare to say that and ended up caught up in the transformation. Though he wore a shirt this time, it was baggy, lax, and I could make out a scar in its open collar. The darkness softened his gold hair to something like a mousse brown, and the shadows brought out the lines of premature age on his face.

Link sat down next to me on the dock and stuck his own bare feet into the water. He pulled up the end of a fishing rod to get to work on untangling the string.

"Your right," he said. "Stupid question."

We sat in something just a bit too tense to be called comfortable as he untangled the bobber and readied the line.

"So, what do you think of the townsfolk so far?" he asked. He had turned to finger through the grass, probably for bugs.

I shrugged and leaned back onto my hands. "Shopkeeper's a bit snotty. That Fergie lady seems sensible enough."

"Pergie."

"Close enough. Who'd name their daughter Pergie anyways? Doesn't sound cute at all."

"I'm sure there's weirder names where you come from. Ah ha!" He turned back around, grinning at a fat cricket squirming for dear life between pinched fingers. I recoiled.

"Eyugh! Hurry and spear it already."

"What, you don't like bugs?" He leaned towards me, wielding the cricket like a bomb.

I was not amused. "I'm taller than you," I said. "I'll push your sorry butt into the river."

"Fine fine, don't have to take it that far." He still had that quirky grin at the corner of his mouth as he hooked on the cricket and flicked the string into the water. "Btw, you left your hair at my house."

"Oh Din, burn it, or I will."

"No way, I've already hung it up like my prized pelt. I want to see your face every time you walk in and see your hair hanging off the wall."

"…you're a freak."

"Says the sunburnt ginger."

I flinched and hugged myself without thinking better. "I'd like to see you looking as good!"

His grin widened and one of his sharp eyebrows rose. It took me a full ten seconds to realize what he thought was so funny. I rolled my eyes and made sure to scoot away as far as possible. Idiot. Did he think I was going to blush and squirm like some girl with a crush? He knew just as well as I did that I wasn't flirting, no way in burning hell.

"No, I don't expect you to squirm and blush."

I jumped. "Excuse me?"

"That's what you were thinking, right? You did a little snobby roll of your chin with a sniff and everything—with the eye roll. Caught that too."

"Just how closely are you watching me, creep?"

"Maybe as closely as a creep who stands outside my house at night."

"I've never done that! I was walking by once, thank you."

"On your way to what? Your privy throne deep in the forbidden forest?"

I turned my head so fast my braid whipped to the other side of my skull. My teeth clenched and I could have dug my nails into his stupid pretty face. I had had enough humiliation for one day without him talking to me like he knew me, when I didn't even know myself!

The playful spark in his eyes softened and he sobered.

"Right," he said quietly. "Long day. And you're right, I don't know you."

"Stop trying to read my mind, I didn't say that."

"And I think I got a bite!" he tugged the pole. "Oh, nope, just grass. Tch, darn."

A chilly breeze brushed over us, tickling goose bumps from my arms. I shivered and ducked into my shoulders, glowering at some point on the water. Why wasn't I leaving? He irritated me, so what?

Like the night before, I found I didn't want to. And for not the first time, it frightened me, because I didn't know why that was and I didn't even know who he was or why he had moved me to…to what?

I turned my face to hide how the corners of my mouth quivered and my chin wrinkled. I put a hand over my brow and eyes, hoping to massage the surge of hysteria I had fought back since the beginning of all this. I may not remember anything, but I was not one who lost control…I didn't want to be one who did.

But, then…I didn't have control, now…did I?

He tentatively touched my back. When I didn't pull away, he drew closer and lightly ran his fingers in measured circles. It was almost as though he sensed my discordance.

"Who are you?" My voice came out brittle and bright.

"Nothing much."

I would have snorted at that, maybe demand he go into detail—whatever made it so he could guess my thoughts and read me, or why he could be the reason to anything—but my tenacious hold slipped and tears burned their way onto my sunburned face. It had, after all, been a very long day.

He didn't say anything when I couldn't help but breathe back a quiet sob or when I gave in to the sniffs. He just rubbed my back in circles, and when he had to pull back to reel in a fish, once the fish was back in the water his hand was back, soothing and warm against the cool of the night I had found so refreshing before.

"I don't like you," I said.

His hand stopped. "What I do?"

"Be irritating."

"Granted." His hand moved once more. I almost smiled. It all seemed so familiar. He was a stranger, and yet, sitting next to him beside the water, his hand on my back, the dewy smell of grass and moon, I could almost reach…

Pain splintered through my body.

At my pained cry Link flinched back.

"What's wrong? Hey, say something."

It throbbed with each of my heartbeats, sending splinter after splinter through my veins. I couldn't breathe, the moon suddenly seemed far too bright. I curled in on myself, pulling my knees to my face, the smart of my sunburns nothing to the broken glass beneath my skin.

Then, just as it had started, it stopped.

Link had gotten to his knees and had physically pulled me to him. Even as I lowered my knees, one of his hands fluttered over me, checking me for wounds, clear alarm written on his features. He caught my eye fast.

"Where does it hurt? What happened?"

His eyes…blue, even dilated in the darkness, and wild…like a wolf's.

"Midna?"

Spiking sparks. I slapped his hand aside and scuttled from him, teeth bared.

"I'm not Midna!"

Without a second glance back, I pushed myself to my feet and ran through the protests of my blistered feet.


	7. Relapses

" _Doppelgangers frighten because they are fakes in place of the real thing and might never be discovered."_

 _-Wisdom of Horror_

Chapter 7

With the anti-sunburn lotion slathered on every bare bit of flesh I had, I set out with the pickax over my shoulder, jaw set. Ilia had only watched in wide-eyed bewilderment as I took the torn rags I asked for and tied them about my blistered hands and set out to attack more grass. The morning sun still sat white and cool between the hills.

Because a great, thrilling ambition had taken over me last night. I would become independent. Included in that package was my own place, which meant I'd have to harden my body a bit in order to build myself a house—or work for one. But as I slung down the pickax into the defenseless tufts of unwanted weeds, I cackled: why settle with just a house? I was going to get myself a freaking palace. The steps to getting there were a bit blurry at the moment, but I was positive that once I got a bit more of my memories, if not all, I'd have more than enough on hand to figure out just how to do it.

"A castle," I hissed to the grasses, as though to defy them. "With freaking battlements and towers, and a bed as big as a house."

"What would you do with a bed that big?"

Half-way through a swing I turned and pitched the pickax at him without thinking. The moment it left my hands a thrill of horror took me as I realized I had chucked with the gut impression that he'd be fine, but chucking pickax's _killed_ people! I, at the charity of everyone in the town, was about to become—

He caught it. He looked almost as surprised as me, but then it melted into a smirk that fit the tousled gold hair and sun kissed skin (if only my skin were so nicely tanned, ugh)far too well to be fair.

"You trying to kill me?"

I jerked my head, trying to pull off haughty. "Don't sneak up on me."

He slid the pickax to hold it under its head and leaned it to his hip to eye me with more than a little bit of cockiness.

"You knew I'd catch it, didn't you?"

I just about lost it like a cat struck by lightning.

"Leave me alone, you _creep!_ "

"You're Midna."

"No I'm _not!_ "

"How would you know? Being so insistent clearly says you are."

"Shut up, stop—stop projecting on me!"

"Projecting on you what?"

"People! Don't make me into someone I'm not!"

He barked a laugh, and his dry delight possibly made me even more wild. "Calm down, I'm just stating who you are. You want to know who you are, don't you?"

"You said I wasn't!" I shrieked. "She's supposed to be an _alien!_ "

Just then, the door to the house banged open and the bulk of Bo appeared, horn mustache bustling.

" _What's the commotion?_ " He narrowed his eyes at us. "Link, what you doing to that poor girl?"

"Nothing! I've just figured out who she is—"

"NO YOU HAVE NOT!"

"Good Ladies above—" he puffed, and was cut off by the door flying open behind him.

"What's going on?" asked Ilia.

"You can calm down, now, Midna."

"Give me my pickax! I'm going to gouge your eyes out!"

"Yep, she'd threaten me like that too."

"SHUT UP!"

Ilia's hands flew to her mouth. "What the—" then her features flashed to stony indignation. Just as I lunged forward for the pickax, her clear, icy voice cracked out Link's name.

And I got distracted with how he turned into a little boy to his mother and cringed.

Not distracted enough to take back my ax, though.

"How low can you sink?" she hissed. "If she says she isn't Midna, she isn't."

"Come off it," he said. "You don't even know Midna—"

"And I don't intend to if she says she isn't her. What right do you have going around and forcing your beliefs on a girl who hasn't a memory to her name? Do you have a soul?"

Even her father, who had been all apoplectic alarm before, had shrunk back behind his daughter, toeing back for the front door.

"Ilia, this doesn't concern you—"

"Concern me?" Oh yeah. Wrong thing to say. I almost cackled as his shoulders hunched for the blow. "For one, you're on _my_ property, and secondly, until she can hold her own, she's a member of _my_ house! So get off my lawn, leave her alone, and for Din's sake, _grow up!_ "

He had stopped hunching. He looked less funny by the time those last two words slapped him, but I tried hard to laugh (at least inwardly) anyways. I was right, he was wrong, and he was being sent away like a dog between his legs—

As a wolf he had never done that. And even now, facing Ilia, his head was bowed, his expression hidden by his bangs. He seemed from a different world from her, listening to words from a script he no longer played a part in.

Suns popped in my vision. A cry of pain bubbled to my throat, but it never made it out before the ax grew immeasurably heavy, dropped to the ground, and me along with it.

I tried catching myself—my arms even moved to listen to me—but when my hands found the ground they found their load too heavy.

The sun's were bursting like blisters to bleed out more painful white. I felt oddly…bleached, like a blanket left too long in the sun is bleached of its color. No energy, too hot, too blindly hot—

"Ilia! Get a blanket! Get her in the basement!"

I'd felt this before: his arms. But not like this. His arms were the same—oh, his arms were the same, and he there was that hint of hay I never grew use to, because I didn't know what hay was until I met him.

The moment I was inside, I knew it. I gasped for air as though the sun had been smashing my lungs flat. The shade poured on me like ice water to a burn.

And at last, sometime after the pain had faded like a bad dream, the suns a bad nightmare, I opened my eyes to the friendly darkness of Ilia's basement and a familiar pair of feral, furious eyes…no…not furious. Frightened. Concerned. But it mixed to fury.

"What happened?" he snapped. "What happened last night? Did you remember something?"

"Link, give her a moment to breathe," said Ilia, her sharpness robbed of her by apprehension.

He ignored her. "Please, where does it hurt?"

I felt a quick stab of hot pain, but nothing came to me. As I looked at him blankly, rubbing my sun burned arms and feeling faintly drained, a faint memory of a few minutes before came to me and I frowned.

"You're a wolf?" I asked.

Ilia gave a sharp little giggle, as though surprised, "Oh, silly, you're seeing things. Too much sun can do that to you, and you did get awfully sunburned."

That turned my frown to her. Sounded like someone who would cover up something, but she didn't know, did she? Know what? He wasn't a wolf, where'd wolf come from? It must be from that fang impression I got. When he bared his teeth and snarled like he had, it would make anyone look like they have fangs. Freaking asshole must have given me a hell of a conniption or something…

I looked back at Link, whose expression had frozen. His sky blue eyes jumped from one of mine to the other, searching them out, dissecting every thought he could glen.

"Where'd you get that?" he asked.

"Well, I was just thinking," I said lightly, trying to dissipate the heavy air that I'd brought (all I'd done was faint, really), "that the way you were acting to Ilia was like a dog with its tail between its legs, and I thought for some reason that if you'd been a wolf—or, rather, wolves don't do that—or but they do." I screwed up my face. "Hey, I'm okay. I really did just get too much sun. Wow, seriously, I thought I was blind for a moment there. I'm so sorry, Ilia, I think I might have burst a vessel or something, I didn't mean to worry you like that. I'm okay now, really. Is it okay if I do something inside for today?"

"Of course," she said, a hand to her chest. Then she turned back on Link, ragging mother hen back. "This all happened because you got her so riled up, you bully! Get out of my house."

Strangely, he did just that, without a fuss. A strange coolness had settled over him, which I found more disturbing and nerve racking than any form of rage he had shown me before. He apologized to me and Ilia individual, promised Ilia to make up for it by finishing my yard work for me, and left without a glance back.

Afterwards, with little coaxing from Ilia, I ended up falling asleep in the basement right where he had left me, with my back to the wrestling ring and as much as my skin pressed up to the dark, cool, hard-beaten earth. I dreamed strange dreams that almost woke me occasionally in fits of cold sweat and alarm, and at one point I almost pushed myself up to chase after him, as though he were still just leaving, but by the time I woke up in the pitch black with the sound of Bo's snoring above to tell me the time, I couldn't remember a single thing I had dreamt.


	8. Ending

Chapter 8

I had slept through the day without meaning to, and that frightened me. The fact that I had taken so ill after a fit in the sun didn't sit well with me. Did I have some sickness that made the sun lethal to me? Was I so pale for that purpose? But if that were the case, I could never live a normal life. I'd be little more than human, a monster, a sort of vampire the craved the night and feasted on the sunshine—

I shook my head hard and put aside the too-big boots I had been putting on. I couldn't stay like this. I couldn't stay here.

With so many unknowns and terror pressing in on me on all sides, I took off into the night to the only thing I knew.

My hands shook as I knocked hard on his door. A stray thought floated in that he would be asleep—then what would I do?—when the door opened.

Without meaning to, without planning to, I flung myself onto him, trembling as though freezing to death and starving for his warmth.

"What's happening to me?" I whimpered into his shoulder, clinging so hard I could have sworn he would break. "Last—yesterday—I'm waking up next I'm—am I dying? Am—am I just going to die? Is it—"

"Hey—"

"I d-dddon't want to live my life in the dark, did I almost die? What happened to me—please don't let me die—please, I'm sorry for being mean, I'm sorry for being bad, I didn't mean—"

He let out a loud sigh and pulled me in roughly, which was more of a trick than ought to be as he was shorter than me, and kicked the door close behind me.

"Breathe, you're freaking yourself out for no reason—" he started.

"You don't know that, you dd-don't know—"

"Fine, then, shut. Up."

I snapped my jaw closed. I had done wrong—I was too forward—

But he didn't let me pull away. Rather, he ducked down and nimbly swept my legs up from beneath me. It was only then did I realize that the only reason I could see him and anything of his house was because of the moonlight pouring through the window, because his fireplace had been left empty and cold.

I told myself I could allow him to carry me since my crumbling world didn't make sense anyways. He didn't take me far, but to the back of his house where a soft pallet bed had been built into the wall. He sat me on it, then tugged up the blankets about me, even throwing one above my head like a hood so only my face remained uncover. He paused to look at me, and the strangest, most open of smiles graced his lips.

"Never thought I'd see you like that," but he sobered quickly. "You're like ice. Stay here, I'll light a fire."

I then noticed he was fully dressed, boots and all. The whole town had been asleep, and the moon high, and yet here he was…and that night I had come he had been asleep on the floor, when he had a bed the whole time.

As I shivered and waited, I took in more details I had overlooked: a sharpened knife stuck in one of the bed posts, a line of laundry hanging from the ceiling, a ladder down to what could have been a basement below—

And paintings. Beautiful, colorful paintings filling the farthest corner of his house from floor to ceiling, hidden from anyone that might enter unless they took the liberty to sit on his bed. They ranged from goats, to the children, to Ilia—but half way down they warped, darkened, depicting strange beasts of ethereal forms and heavy masks, geometric patterns of sharp red, malformed heads, fabric hands, never an eye—

The snap of a happy flame over a log broke my attention. Link's shadow had been thrown to the opposite wall by a warm glow that batted back the silver of the moon. I watched the shadow, marred by the ladder and platform it led to and bookshelves, stand, brush off its hands, and reappear from around the corner to me. Without a word he picked me up, blankets and all, nearly disappearing himself in the process, and carried me effortlessly to the braided rug in front of the fireplace. After sitting me down, he readjusted the blankets and turned back to unhook what could have been a kettle from the fire. In silence he filled up the kettle with water he had in a large bucket at the end of the counter, then he put it back over the fire. Only then did he sit down by me, half-turned from the fire. He leaned a hand on his thigh and gave me another one of his piercing, thorough stares.

"Breathing again?" he asked.

"More or less," I mumbled with a sniff. My body was taking its own sweet time generating enough heat to be trapped by the blankets.

"Well, just keep doing that for a bit."

I didn't want to nod. In the scant calm that returned to me, a bit of the old voice began to crackle across the darkness to me. _No memories, no friends_ , it whispered, _but no one could take my pride_.

But I just snorted at it. No use to it now. No use to anything.

"Um, those pictures…they're good," I said, ducking my face behind the blanket. Compliments, apparently, didn't come easy to me.

"Thanks."

"What…those monsters…those are what are in your nightmares?"

He sighed. So he thought I had forgotten, eh? "Sometimes. Maybe you should get some sleep. You've been through a bit."

"I've been asleep all day!" And I felt like my brain was being scrambled for it—even more than it already was, that is.

"Then sleep more, until I can figure out how to fix this."

The way he said that made me wiggle my head out from the blankets and frown. He had grabbed a poker and was poking the logs lazily, occasionally moving an ember under the kettle.

"You know what's going on?"

"I rarely 'know.' Often I just work with the hints I'm given and hope it works."

"Then give me a hint, as I'm drowning to death for one."

"Seeing as the last hint sent you into seizures," he said, pulling out the kettle to check the water, even though it had only been over the fire a minute or so, "I'd rather not. Apparently bluntness isn't the way to go, though there is one answer I like to know."

"Oh, only one? Gee, aren't you lucky."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Good to see you coming back around."

"Only because you're being irritatingly vague."

"But I'm going to have to be to keep you safe, I think."

"Safe from what? All you've done is pretend I'm some fantasy girlfriend of yours—"

"She isn't my girlfriend," he said sharply.

A bit affronted, I sniffed and threw the blanket back over my head. "Fine, oh crazy one. Let's say I am Midna and that I do know you in my pretty black thoughts. Why is it that the two times I think I'm actually remember something, and about you, I daresay, I get that…whatever that was, hmm? But scratch that, how would I—or Midna—get from that different dimension you talked about to here? Magic?"

He pushed the kettle back over the fire. "Hmmph. More or less. Though…magic has rules. Magic doesn't just poof."

"Oh, dear me, all my dreams are ruined."

"She can't be here," he said, more to the fire to me. "You're right, it should be…shadow and lights can't mingle. They can't. Which is why…"

He turned his face to me, wild eyes once more searching, blazing with something I couldn't pick out.

"Either you or me have to go. I'm more inclined to myself—"

I nearly jumped to my feet, an unknown indignation prickling every nerve in my body. But, as I was ensnared in blankets, I had to settle with yelling.

"I will _not_ chase you away from your home!"

Another jerk of a smile. "I thought you'd say that. And, well…nothing moves you once your mind is on something."

I shuffled uneasily. It was a losing war to argue that he didn't know me.

He poked another ember under the kettle, yawned, and pushed himself to his feet. From there he went to the counter, where he set up what looked to be mugs with pinches of tea leaves. Then he crossed the hearth to the bookshelves next to his door and beneath the second floor platform, where he pulled out some paper, a book, and some pencils.

"I'll write a letter to Renaldo," he said. "And send it with you. I'm…I'm afraid I can't go with you, because, well, every moment you spend with me could jog something in your memory, and it's probably best that you not remember."

Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn't that. "Not remem—where the hell do you think you're sending me? And how? Do you expect me to magically know where I'm going?"

"Of course not. I'll…find someone to take you there."

"Forget it, just take me yourself." Bullying him would be ten times easier then figuring out how to bully anyone else, at least. And he was the one that wanted me away from here anyways, whether I needed to be or not.

He hesitated once more, but finished sitting down next to me, tucking the second of the pencils behind his ear.

"If I can't find anyone else…" he groaned and pressed a forefinger and thumb to his eyes. "For the love of Nayru…" He took a deep breath. "There's no telling what could happen if you remember. Last time you were exposed you nearly died…and if you loved the world of light that much…"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Nothing," he dropped his hand and adjusted the page. "Be quiet for a moment, I need to write."


	9. Departure

**I'm baaaaack! I think I'll finish this story. I'm also starting 'Fantiality Infinity' again too. ^.^ Sorry for the wait. I hate unfinished stories.**

 **I also have chapter ten, but I got to edit that and other stuffs. I got started on 11 today.**

" _Love is an earnest and sincere concern for another person's well being."_

Chapter 9

And since I couldn't think of anything to say to dissuade him, and, in my heart, knew him to be right, I let the silence fall. The kettle whistled, tea was poured, and then left before me with two lumps of honey. Link scraped the first letter into the fire. Then the second and third. The forth he folded and sealed with string. Only then did he take a sip from his tepid tea. I reached out of my blankets to take a sip as well, and the sugar soothed some raw piece of my soul.

I glanced back after I finished my mug to see grey morning light trickling through the window high above. I had yet to see Link dress into his night clothes or nod off once.

"Have you slept at all?" I asked.

He didn't answer, his gaze lost somewhere above his tea cup. My face trailed down to his rocking foot. I watched it and stirred. Inexplicably moved, I put down the mug and brought out my other arm to reach for him. He flinched away at my touch.

"Sorry, you said something?" he said, as though he didn't just jerk away from me.

I should explain myself, but I couldn't. All I knew was that seeing his foot wobbling back and forth like that made me ache and hurt to hold him, and even as I crawled out of my warm place and out into the cold to reach him, I could feel my eyes burning. He shuddered and jerked even more beneath my touch, the beginning of a protest a breath on my arm, but then a settled stillness came over him.

The next thing I knew, I was the one being grabbed. He took me in great handfuls, as though desperate to grab as much of me as he could. Once I was crushed to his chest, my legs left to awkwardly find a place to tangle about him and on the floor, his hands twisted up in my shirt and hair. He buried his face into the curve where my shoulder met my neck and breathed in deep.

"Din," he croaked.

Then he gave a quiet, shaking sob. I thought I should be horrified, or at least embarrassed to have a nigh stranger holding onto me for dear life and sobbing into my shoulder, but my own tears prickled out, as though I had almost expected it of him. I clung to him all the harder.

"I don't have to leave," I said. "You don't know if remembering is bad for me."

He shook his head.

"Are you sure?"

In answer, he ducked said head down until only his hair remained on my shoulder. I sighed and, after a moment's hesitation where I wiped the few tears from my face, reached up a hand to cautiously stroke his hair.

"In order to live here, you'd have to no longer be twili," he muttered. "To do that…you'd have to shed all of it…all of it…and…"

"Full sentences. Be a big boy."

He gave a wet, humorless chuckle. "Brat. That's not how you comfort someone."

"Not my forte'. You were saying?"

Pulling back, he sniffed and turned his face so that his thick bangs covered the majority of his face. "A too arrogant part of me sort of hoped that you'd come here to be with me, but, then, if that were the case I wouldn't be hurting you, would I? Even if you had forgotten me."

Sound logic. Even if it didn't click right in my head. Though I got a bit more distracted by my heart, which had picked up the moment he'd gathered me in his arms and now gave more sporadic, twanging jumps. I could have had sticks caught in my throat.

"Link…I don't think—"

"You're Midna, I know."

But the moment he said that, I didn't know what it had been I was about to say. Though I suddenly wished I were Midna. I wanted to be the woman who deserved the affection torturing him now and eking out of the lines of his hands as they lingered on my forearms before he pulled away. Even as he stood and sheepishly scuttled from my sight to vanish in the depths of his house, my soul reached for him, cried for him. I wanted nothing more than for his warmth to wrap desperately around me again. I wanted him to stay, to explain why his art turned to nightmares, why he glowed in the darkness of my memories like a too-bright sun, why he _moved_ me.

The dawn's light had spilled pink into the tree house when I jumped to my feet. I went to the ladder and dropped to all fours.

"You're my reason." I said into the darkness below. "I've known it ever since I saw you. You're my reason, Link."

"To what?" came a voice echoing down from below.

My arms started to shudder. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the black smear of his painted shadow demons.

"I don't know," I said, regretting saying anything at all.

"So that could be anything at all?" A pause of quiet. Then, "Even so…I can't let you die. If you revert back to a twili, the light will kill you. I swore I felt something of twilight about you when you were down in Ilia's basement, like a shade crossing your skin or…so just give me a moment and I'll be back up, I'm just gathering some things for you. Rusl will probably take you."

"You take me!"

Nothing came from below. Trembling, I sat back to put a hand to my head, where an ache had started to throb. I thought I recognized the shattered glass feeling prickling along my arms. I clenched my eyes and willed myself to not think.

His boats thunked on the way up the ladder. Then they quicken. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." And I was. The pain was bearable, and even passing as I spoke. "But take me with you, please."

Even as I said that, it came to me. A sky full of stars, sand as far as a man could see, rising and falling in curves. In the distance a hulking monument, crowned with seven gold, winged circles, sentries to the evil below.

And Link, dressed in green, smiling at me beneath my small hand. _Will you go with me?_

Pain broke across my flesh as it had before. My blood turned to knives, my head to fire. The pink dawn light burst to blazing, bleaching my world.

I lost track of myself. When I came to, Link had me in his arms and had already made his way half way across the village. From beneath I almost recognized the firm set to his jaw and the fire to his eyes.

"Link, no,"

"If these flashes keep coming, send me a letter. I'll be there in a moment, but for now this is the only thing I have to go off of."

"But you said you'd come…you said…" I cried out, cringing in on myself. Through the knives I thought I could feel his arms tightening about me.

The next time the blaze died down and the pain faded, I found myself on a couch, with Link talking to the man I had come to associate with the kind blond woman with the easily sunburnt son.

"—I'm really sorry about this short notice, but—I'll pay you back, I honestly will—"

"Calm down, son. It's the least I can do. Don't worry about paying me back, I know what you've done."

"Compelled to do, Rusl, there's nothing special about what I did."

"You're modesty isn't funny, and you haven't slept a wink, have you? Get home and get some shut eye. We'll be out of here within the hour."

I reached up drowsily and stared down in momentary confusion at my too-pale hand. I could still see dirt from Ilia's garden beneath my nails. Funny. I shouldn't be going anywhere. Screw Link and his messed up idea of life, I had a palace to build, didn't I? What had happened to that idea? And my memories—

Oh. So he was right. He did cause them. He did cause the pain, the blinding light. The sensation of being bleached by the sun.

I shot up. "Link!" Then wavered as the blood rushed to my head.

His arm caught me as I tipped from the couch. "If this doesn't work, write. Promise?"

I growled the best I could. "I don't need to promise, you pathetic man. Of course I will." And I looked up just in time to see his responding, quirked smile, though it didn't reach his eyes. I had to hold my breath as I felt another tide of glass and memory fighting to rise up.

"Be safe." And pushing me back into place on the couch, he gave a nod to the brunette, squarish Rusl, and left out the front door. I felt like something important hadn't taken place and ended up staring at the place where he had been long after he left, even when Rusl's wife had come out from their bedroom to help him pack. She passed by me to check on me, but I hardly had any words to respond to her, other than meek 'thank you's for her kindness.

"Is he sure?" she said to her husband.

"That boy knows a lot more than he lets on," said Rusl grimly. "And Renado was technically the one to guide Link in getting Ilia's memories back. And, well, there are quite a few legends of healing surrounding Kakariko."

"But first thing in the morning?"

"Hush," he said rather gruffly. "I'll be back tomorrow at the latest. We needed some new sheers and ingots anyways, I'll get them while I'm there."

"Please be safe."

"Always am."

I averted my eyes as they kissed. The pain had almost completely dissipated, though it remained in my chest where my heart thumped an erratic, unnerving rhythm. I was missing something. Something important. At the same time, the voice of pride that echoed alone from the darkness whispered that Link was right. That boy had always had a good head for puzzles.

I dropped that thought as the glittering, razor glass agony threatened to raise its head. I found myself being fed a sweetened gruel by the woman. She threw a worn, second-hand cloak over me as I stood awkwardly by the door, having to bow my head in order to not feel the top of the doorframe on my scalp.

A little mewl alerted her to Fila.

I jumped. "Can I say good-bye?"

Uli nodded and brought out Fila, who was bleary eyed and fussy for food. I kept my ginger hug brief, as the little girl's head bobbed about my shoulder for a breast or bottle to suckle.

"Thank you for your patience," I told the babe as I gave her back.

Uli smiled at that, bobbing her babe to quell her cries if but a moment longer. "You are always welcome."

"I've done nothing to deserve your welcome," I said, watching out the window as Rusl came back around, a mule and cart following.

"And neither has Fila," she finished curling up on the couch and settled her baby to a breast. "And yet she is just because she exists."

Those words circulated in my head as I loaded onto the little wagon with Rusl. They warmed the emptiness in my like fire and Link's honey tea. It whispered of hope in a world where one doesn't have to fight to have a place to live, but one has that right by birth.

 _Then why would such a world hurt me?_ I thought as I watched the little village duck back beneath the forest and the sun peer out above the treetops. _Why would such a world, would light, coerce Link to let me go?_

But that was easy, wasn't it? What could be the biggest difference between me and Fila?

"I'm bad," I whispered to the morning air. "Maybe even evil."

And Link? You make me so.


	10. Dust

**Ugh...heat...I hate you...brain...won't...work...**

" _Man is that he might have joy."_

 _-2 Nephi_

Chapter 10

The place Rusl inevitably loaded me off to was not like the green hamlet I had left. For one, the only trees in sight were dead, and the sun blazed down unfiltered and caged by towering canyon walls. Even though night already had her shoulders over the horizon, the earth wavered with heat waves.

The little town that braced itself against the crag and stone looked dead. I mean, the houses were just as sunbleached and dusty as the land they had been built on, and I couldn't imagine any of them being habitable. When a tall, dark, olive skinned man with a wide mouth stepped out of one, I mentally stuffed my hands into my mouth. All I needed to do now was upset my new host...ugh, that had a bad taste to it.

"Rusl," said the new man in greeting the moment our little wagon came to a stop. "To what do I owe this visit?"

"It's not so much for me as it is for Link." Rusl pulled the letter I had watched Link so carefully pen and tied that morning and handed it to him. That immediately made me perk up, even though the fatigue of travel had worn me down to a nigh pancake in my seat. This was the man Link threw away three drafts in order to get his letter right. Renado.

As Renado read the letter, Rusl jumped off and offered a hand to me. I accepted it not because I wanted to. My knees and hips popped like I'd aged eighty years in a day. I hadn't any shoes to begin with, besides the oversized golashes, which I had left at Ilia's, so I got a hard, unyielding greeting to my blistered feet. I didn't stumble, though. The last bit of me I had declared stumbling an absolute no in the face of strangers, so neither of them caught hint or twitch of pain from me. I stood tall, shoulders back, face forward, hands folded before me.

 _Do not show weakness..._

"I can't say I quite understand this," said the large man, a hand appearing from his tasseled sleeve to finger his chin. "A girl who has lost her memory, but he wants me to keep it that way?"

Rusl gave a weary grin that I instantly felt guilty for, but I didn't let that show either. "Say it like that and it sounds bad. It has to do with that...special friend of his. From the other side."

"Yes, he wrote that." Renado shook his head and folded the letter into his sleeve. "But I'll see what I can do." He didn't smile at me with his mouth, but there was something in the way the crow's feet appeared at the corner of his dark eyes as he turned to me. "Welcome. I am Renado, Shaman and Chief of Kakariko village. It says in the letter that your name is Midna, but that it doesn't have to be, so what is it you would like to be called?"

"Midna is fine," I said stiffly. Names could always be changed if necessary.

"Interesting character, ain't she?" said Rusl, as though I weren't standing right there. What was it with these small town folk blurting out their unasked for opinions? Wasn't anyone around me raised with an ounce of decorum?

Renado must have, for he just made a noise in his throat that was neither agreeing or disagreeing.

"Well, then. Midna, what can I do for you?"

That caught me. I mentally stumbled and my shoulders dropped without me.

What did I...in all this time, no one had bothered to ask me. They had just taken care of me like the helpless, useless thing I was with no thought that I'd actually have a valid opinion in the matter.

A roar of affection for this man rose in me.

"I'd like a job, sir."

He didn't look surprised, though his eyebrows did rise a little. Rusl did chuckle, though.

"She could probably use shoes too-"

I cut him off. "A job first. Before you try to attend to any of my needs, allow me my dignity in earning them first." I hesitated. "Please."

"The first step to healing one's mind is first healing one's pride as a being of worth," said Renado, and this time his straight, wide mouth moved to a real smile. "I completely understand. Would some dinner as we talk about employment be acceptable to you?"

I was liking this guy more and more. The way he spoke put me at ease, as though it were the familiar sounds of home. Perhaps this was where I was from.

Though I wanted to jump up and down and cry, 'that would be marvelous!' I found myself answering with a simple yes.

Rusl gave a low whistle, wagging his head in humor. "I guess I'll be off, then. The wife expects me back by tomorrow."

Renado didn't try to fight him to stay. He just bowed, as though he understood even better than Rusl how important it was that he head home that minute, and kept his place by the doorway of the large, two story...shack until Rusl's ride disappeared around the canyon bend. I stood vigil with him, for once perfectly content to not move a muscle.

When he moved, it wasn't to lead me back into the building he had just left, but rather off the sad plank deck and down the dirt road to a round structure I had noticed from the start was different from the others. For one, it stood apart from them, rather than sharing its sides with other buildings. For the second, it was like unto a dome, but with a flattened top. Patterns zigzagged about its sides with sunbleached cadence. One of those dead trees stood in a worn down yard besides it.

Little rocks dug through the bandages to my feet. My good mood at finding one of kindred spirit was quickly depleting as the ugly, bone dry town started its formal introduction by reminding me of every crack, sore, burn, and bruise I wore.

As we entered the door, I all but ran for the first servable seat I could find. So much for getting my pride back. Gods, I hurt!

Renado proved to be of the quiet sort, as he didn't linger to badger me with stupid questions, like whether or not I was okay or if he could baby me or do some other simpering crap to soothe his sympathy. His daughter, who only looked like him in eyes and hair, led me to the kitchen, where I once more demonstrated my nigh-uselessness. You'd think even a goat would be able to wipe a floor clean. It was as though I had never held a rag in my life and didn't know how to make it pick up dirt.

Unlike Ilia, though, who made a joke out of all my mistakes as though hoping to ignore the elephant in the room by laughing at how little it was, Renado's daughter said very little. She didn't rush me or take over, but waited patiently, almost as if she had had to deal with someone like me before. Several someones.

He came in some time later and finished the meal we had never gotten back to, so quietly that, at first, I thought the food had been prepared by magic. But by the time it was finished, I was more than surprised to find I had cleaned the entire floor and it didn't look like packed mud. I could see the worn stones as clearly as my bright orange hair in the firelight.

I must have been more exhausted than I thought, for the moment a spoonful of food touched my tongue, whatever buzzing numbness had taken over my insides shattered. I thought I saw mirrors dancing in the firelight, suns in the back of mind, paws pounding over desert sand as a distant wind sang like a woman who had lost her lover.

Stars. So many stars. His face beneath my little hand.

And yet the pain was different this time. It didn't bleach me out of consciousness or fill my blood with glass and fire. Rather, it curled in my chest, aching, heavy, and raw.

I lifted a hand to cover the fact that my chin had wrinkled up and I couldn't get it to smooth back out. Willing the gate close, I took another scoop of food.

Because the lack of pain could only mean that Link was right, and I didn't like that.


	11. Darkness

**I'm sorry for the late update. I was a fool and got myself caught up in too many stories again. *sigh* But I made it a nice, hefty 2500 words! I offer this as a sacrifice to appease the great god readers...*bows and offers chapter plaintively***

Chapter 11

Days passed by me quicker than I could count, like water running out from between my fingers. Luda, Renado's quiet daughter, patiently walked me through the steps of keeping myself and a house in the evenings as her father watched and asked me questions about myself and my memory. During the day I wandered after her into town, ashamed to have to depend on a child to find work. Being a charity case was proving to be more painful than the brief flashes of memory that turned the sun unbearably hot and bright and my blood to lava.

Though, speaking of my memory, I found that recalling the memories I had already obtained did nothing to me. This was both a blessing and a curse, as I found myself drifting back to that image of Link in the sea of sand and stars, his cheek beneath that small hand that looked nothing like my own. His smile had been soft as the sand, and his sharp eyes told me a gentle secret I wanted to hold close and never open, as even then, in that distant memory, I had been wary of what suffering would occur should I know what was inside.

Occasionally, as I wandered my scant memories, I'd go too far. Usually I'd be in bed at night, so no one noticed my brief seizures. But once, as I was helping a barrel chested villager tear out the old trees of graveyard, glancing at a shifted gravestone sent a zap of cringing lightning through my system, even as I remembered horrible, monstrous insects sparking with purple light. A wolf had been beneath me, lunging at it, jaws agape, furry mane all but swallowing my body.

Wolf. Why did I keep thinking of a wolf?

Poor man. He'd almost been as startled as his mule when I collapsed at his feet, probably writhing and foaming, for all I know. I've never seen myself when such happened.

He did gingerly finger my arm and mutter something about my skin.

Once I had recovered, however, he wouldn't let me continue working for him. Seemed to think I was some delicate thing, which was a pity. I was finding I liked hard labor. There was something intrinsically soothing to my pride in feeling my muscles strain and feel dirt on my skin.

Renado had a talk with him, and after a day of mind numbing rest in which I cleaned Renado's home ceiling to floor, he took me back.

I also found I had an excellent memory for whatever I read. Within days I had every book and scroll in the village read, so Renado gave me access to a set of medical tomes, which were precious to him. I drank those in, loving the feel of my mind easily grasping every concept and drawing wells of knowledge I didn't know I had from the depths of the hole in my memory. With this I found something about myself that I could actually appreciate: I was intelligent.

Days. Weeks. It couldn't have been too long. My skin eventually tanned to a warm cinnamon from day after day of working in the sun doing odd jobs for various villagers, who seemed to find my willingness to do hard, hot, unpleasant jobs qualification enough, and I was paid well. Eventually I took up residence in one of the abandoned homes, though I still slept in Renado's house for a good three days while I patched it up and slew pests that had made it home in the time it was empty. Then, I used my hard earned rupees on my own bed, my own clothes, and other essentials. Though I had only learned three or four recipes in my time with Renado, they were enough.

The little house was only one room, with a little kitchen in the corner on the ground floor and a ladder leading to a loft where I pushed in the bed through a peculiar hole in the ceiling. I had mended that up straight way, having learned about fixing roofs from one of the odd jobs.

Despite having given enough to make me their indentured servant till the end of time, Renado and Luda gave me a beautiful weaved rug as a home welcoming gift. I really did like those two.

But sooner than I knew, I found myself where I wanted to be: in my own place, earned by my own hands, with my pride more or less returned to me.

During slow evenings, I'd write to Link, telling him whatever inane bits of my life I felt could be of some use. His replies were few and frustratingly short, mostly just to assure me that he knew how to read and had gotten my letters. Whenever I asked questions about him, he either ignored them or gave few word answers. After the fifth such letter, I was beginning to seriously doubt the drama I experienced in being separated from him. All that wasted energy and the idiot man was just going to up and forget about me anyways. It wasn't like I'd liked him in…that sense, you know?

Course, that lead down a road with all sorts of uncomfortable thoughts.

Among those thoughts were the various young men who I had met during my odd jobs. Hard labor, after all, was more of a man's thing, and four out of the five had done a fair bit of staring and pointed remarks towards me that were far too close to flirting for my taste.

I didn't trust men. Horny, stupid, smelly lot of them that would no sooner jump you like a wild animal then sleep the rest of the day away.

….Where I had gotten that opinion, I didn't know.

And yet…Renado had pointed out something the day I'd officially moved out.

"Hopefully you can build on the house if you need to, though children are more adaptable than many give credit. They'll grow wherever you plant them."

Children…I guess…life includes family, right?

Which was where my brooding led me the first night I wasn't too exhausted to stay up and do some soul gazing with the fire. Link's letter was a week late in coming, which was usual for him. Despite knowing it would hold nothing for me, I still felt a small tremor of hope and excitement that the odd pang of loneliness hadn't stamped out. I tried to imagine myself with children, and just couldn't. In fact, I couldn't imagine any future for myself. I had been so caught up in getting my own feet under me and my own home that I hadn't stopped to think about what it was I wanted.

But now that I was here, satisfied, but still empty, I still knew that _he_ was my reason. The idiot who didn't seem to miss me at all.

As the fire died down to coals, I couldn't find the will to climb up the ladder and to my bed. The handful of memories I had shifted through my mental eye like well visited pictures. Like always, I lingered on him in the desert with that sand-soft smile and starry sky. And, like always, I couldn't get any further than that.

I clutched at my chest, eyes burning. It hurt. This gnawing, hungry ache in my chest. It hadn't gone away with him, but rather, grown worse and worse by the day. I had even come to the point where I wished I hadn't regained any memories of him at all, let alone one so beautiful.

"Din, it's hard to breathe in here," I muttered, if anything than just to hear my own voice. I got up, pulled a light, second hand shawl around my shoulders, and stepped out into the night.

There was something calming about darkness, or more particularly, the moment of twilight that I found endlessly comforting. I had just missed twilight by a good half hour, but it still goldened the horizon above the edge of the spring. Hung in existence by my own confused pain and longing, I wandered down the empty streets. Pebbles pressed into the bottom of my soft-soled slippers. A breeze brushed a bit of my orange hair across my cheek, longer than it had been when I had arrived here. Usually I kept it tied up in a no-nonsense knot on the back of my head, but one strand must have escaped.

 _Maybe a bath?_ I thought as I drew nearer and nearer to the spring. I was more likely than not to be in need of one, but I had left my soap at home. I hesitated just long enough to realize I didn't care and kept moving towards the water. Once I reached the spring's edge, I followed it to a small cave that opened up at the end to a pool connected to the back of the spring. Luda had brought me to it as a private place for a cool bath if I didn't feel like climbing to the hot spring atop the hotel, which was where most people channeled their bath water from. Since the hot spring's water had healing and rejuvenating qualities about it, people rarely thought of taking a bath in the chilly spring waters.

The evening gloom was just enough to see by as I reached my destination and numbly slipped out of my clothes. A stray thought said I should have brought a lamp, but it made barely a ripple in my melancholy.

Of course the water was nigh freezing, but I dropped in to my chin anyways and let my eyes wander the mysterious swirling patterns of one of the tall guardian stones of the spring.

Eventually, I got use to the cold, and was able to watch the first stars come out. I closed my eyes, let my mind wander, feeling the pebbles beneath my thighs.

Over the gentle hushing of falling water, I heard a rock drop into the water.

The hairs on my neck shot up. A familiar, yet unknown instinct told me I wasn't alone.

For what seemed to be an eternity, I waited in silence, too terrified to turn around, too angry not to. But just as I started to turn, a man's voice spoke.

"You cut your hair."

Keeping my arms crossed firmly over my chest, I turned only my head.

The first impression I had was of a cobra, arched with crest splayed out and fangs all but hidden within a lipless mouth. But no, this was a man, tall and slender, with a face like the moon and smooth, too-soft features. He barely had a nose, and his eyes were round and inhumanly dark.

Neither of us moved. The white of his face seemed to glow, despite the shadow of the cave enshrouding him. He wore strange, skin tight clothes that were more like tattoos than actual clothes, except for a sprawling, cape like cloak embroidered with turquoise, tribal patterns.

Eventually it became apparent to him that I was going to run, for he took a step towards me, though his feet stopped a hair's breadth from the water. Something told me he couldn't come into these waters.

"I suppose you do not remember me," he said, voice like sticky silk. "But I'm not surprised you found a way. You're…resourceful, like that. Or perhaps just stubborn."

"Who are you?" Thankfully, I managed to sound strong and not terrified out of my mind at being found naked and alone by a strange man who didn't look human.

"Would it matter if I told you?" he said. "Don't worry, I will not hurt you."

"Then how about you go away?" Underneath the water I manage to curl my hand around a decent sized stone.

"Ah, no. I'd rather not. My time is short here, and I need to bring you home."

That made me jerk a bit. Home? Where I was originally from?

I managed to push out a bark of dry, humorless laughter. "After all I sacrificed to get away from there?" And all Link had sacrificed, or seemed to have sacrificed, to keep it that way? "I'm not an idiot who's going to trust you just because you say you know me. Go away before you regret it."

That seemed to amuse him, though his dull features made it hard to tell.

"But your purpose has already failed. Why not come home? Your kingdom waits on you, and if you won't return of your own will, I can always take you back by force."

I took a gamble. "How? You can't touch the spring."

"This is true," he said, unfazed. "But I could always do this."

He raised a white hand, wrist draped with black bracelets. Black squares, with no shadow or reflection, popped into being and crashed together. The air around me darkened, and even the stars started to flicker out.

"What are you doing?" This time I didn't do so well keeping the fear out of my voice.

"Just sifting out the light around you," he said calmly, even as his figure became more and more pronounced in the shadow. "Ordinary humans react to the touch of our world in two ways, you see: by either turning into a monster or digressing into a spirit. Since you are not normal, I wonder…"

Sharp pangs stretched along my joints and blood. It wasn't unlike when I remembered something I shouldn't, but this time there was no flash of light, no bleaching sun, no burning sky. Just me tilting into the waters, hot with agony, screaming as images galloped through my mind. Monsters of shadow, outlined by neon reds and turquoise, masked, menacing, flapping and bellowing strange sounds. My fingers twining in streams of levitating orange light, drifted through with bright yellow and shadow. The blood of my ancestors. The magic.

Then, all at once, it was gone, and I was back in the spring, naked, and floundering to get my head above the surface. Over my gasps for air, I heard him.

"Now, come to me, quietly."

I couldn't see straight. Still, among the fear, among the hysterical alarm, my ever present pride boiled up in rage, spitting and hissing.

The moment I got my vision straight again I crawled, not towards him, but deeper into the spring, my teeth clenched. I heard him give a subtle grunt of irritation and more felt than saw the light of the stars beginning to dim once more.

It wasn't till I was chest deep in the water and my head had begun to spin once more with pain and memories that it occurred to me that I had just signed my own death. I couldn't swim like this, and even as my knees buckled I inhaled a lung full of water against my will. My foot slipped and I was sinking, sinking, sinking into the blackness he brought.


End file.
